She turned her head to ask Paul. Her vision staggered through each frame. She heard the bionic sound like Steve Austin made in the Six Million Dollar Man.
Ch-ch-ch-ch …
Paul wasn’t there.
He was standing in front of the rolling cart. He was replacing the old items with new ones. His movements were slow and precise. Ch-ch-ch-ch came the bionic sound as he moved in stop-motion like in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
Claire. She hated the Christmas special with the freakishly happy creatures whose movements stuttered one millisecond at a time. Julia made them watch it every year, and Claire would curl into Lydia like a tiny, frightened doll and Lydia would laugh along with Julia because Claire was such a baby but secretly, the creatures scared her, too.
Paul said, “You’re going to want to prepare yourself for this.”
This sounded important. Lydia felt the scab start to itch. She shook her head. She wouldn’t pick at it. She needed that scab to stay on. Instead, she tried to concentrate on his hands, the stilted moves of his fingers as he straightened everything once, then twice, then a third time, then a fourth.
Lydia heard a new mantra come into her head—
Barbed wire. Pry bar. A length of chain. A large hook. A sharp hunting knife.
A moment of clarity broke through the clouds in her mind.
They were close to the end.
TWENTY-ONE
Claire sat with her back to the wall inside the Office Shop across from Phipps Plaza. She had angled herself between the front and back doors so that she would know if anyone came in. She was the only customer in the small storefront. The clerk was working silently at one of the rental computers. Claire held the burner phone in her hand. Helen had been on I-75 for ten minutes.
Paul still hadn’t called.
Her head was filling with wild reasons for why the phone had not yet rung. Paul was on his way here. He had already murdered Lydia. He was going to murder Claire. He was going to track down Helen and go to Grandma Ginny’s home and then he was going to search for Dee.
Maybe that had been his plan all along, to wipe out her entire family. Claire was nothing more than a calculated first step. Dating her. Wooing her. Marrying her. Pretending to make her happy. Pretending to be happy.
Lies on top of lies on top of more, endless lies.
They were like grenades. Paul lobbed them over the wall and Claire waited an interminable amount of time before the truth finally exploded in her face.
The photographs were a thousand grenades. They were the nuclear explosion that sent her reeling into the darkest place she had ever known.
Paul, fifteen years old, flashing a maniacal grin as he posed for the camera beside the trussed-up body of her sister. He had his thumbs up, the same way he had given Fred Nolan a thumbs-up when he’d given the FBI agent the slip.
Claire stared at the burner phone. The blank screen stared back. She forced herself to come up with less alarming reasons for why the phone was not ringing. The call forwarding wasn’t working properly. Mayhew had talked to someone at the phone company who put Paul on to the burner phone. Adam was secretly in on it and he’d alerted Paul so that his men could follow Claire.
None of those things was any less terrifying, because they all led back to Paul.
Claire patted her hand to her purse until she felt the hard outline of Lydia’s revolver. At least she’d done one thing right. Buying bullets for the gun had been easy. There was a gun store down the street that had sold her a box of hollow-point ammunition, no questions asked.
The Office Shop offered printing services as well as hourly computer rental. She had been too wrapped up in her own fear to flirt with the geeky boy behind the counter, so she’d bribed him with two hundred and fifty dollars of Helen’s cash instead. She had explained her problem in loose terms—she wanted to put something on YouTube, but it was photographs, not movies, and there were a lot of them, along with some spreadsheets, and she needed all of it to work properly because someone was going to try to take them down.
The boy had stopped her there. She didn’t want YouTube, she wanted something like Dropbox, and then Claire had shifted her purse on her shoulder and he had seen the box of ammo and the gun and told her that it was going to be an extra hundred dollars and she wanted something called Tor.
Tor. Claire had a vague recollection of reading about the illegal file-sharing site in Time magazine. It had something to do with the dark web, which meant it was uncataloged and untraceable. Maybe Paul was using Tor to distribute his movies. Instead of emailing large files, he could send out a complicated website link that no one else could find unless they put in the exact combination of letters and numbers.
She had their email addresses. Should she send Paul’s customers his spreadsheets and photographs?
“It’s ready.” The geeky boy stood in front of Claire with his hands clasped in front of his pleated slacks. “Just jack in the thumbdrive and drag everything you want onto the page and it’ll be uploaded.”
Claire read his nametag. “Thank you, Keith.”
He smiled at her before trouncing back to the counter.
Claire pushed herself up. She sat in the chair in front of the computer, occasionally glancing at the entrance and the exit as she followed the boy’s instructions. The store was cold inside, but she was sweating. Her hands weren’t shaking, but she felt a vibration in her body, like a tuning fork had touched her bones. She checked the doors again as Paul’s files started to upload. She had put the JPEGs at the top so that the first click would open the image of Johnny Jackson. The trick would be making someone want to click.
Claire went to the mail program that Keith had set up for her. She had a new email address that came with the ability to schedule the exact time and date that emails were sent out.
She started to type.
My name is Claire Carroll Scott. Julia Carroll and Lydia Delgado were my sisters.
Claire felt sick from the betrayal. Lydia was alive. She had to be alive.
She hit the backspace key until the last sentence was deleted.
I have posted proof that Congressman Johnny Jackson has participated in pornographic films.
Claire stared at the words. This wasn’t entirely true because it was more than porn. It was abduction, rape, and murder, but she was worried that listing all of that out would dissuade people from clicking on the link. She was sending this to every media outlet and government agency who listed a contact address on their website. Most likely, the accounts were monitored by young interns who hadn’t any idea who Johnny Jackson was or who had grown up around email and therefore knew not to click anonymous links, especially ones that connected to Tor.
Claire opened a new browser window. She found Penelope Ward’s email on the Westerly Academy PTO page. Lydia’s nemesis looked just as candy-apple fake as Claire would’ve guessed. The Branch Ward for Congress Exploratory Committee listed the address [email protected]. The site indicated the group was a PAC, which meant they would be looking for any dirt on their opponent that they could find.
The burner phone rang.
Claire headed into the stock room and opened the back door. Rain was still pouring down. The wind had picked up, sending a cold jet of air into the small space. She hoped the background noise was enough to convince Paul that she was driving the Tesla up I-75.